Pricing for common generic medications like lisinopril for high blood pressure can be puzzling — with the simple act of putting away your insurance card sometimes resulting in savings, even substantial ones.
In 2020, doctors wrote more than 88 million prescriptions for lisinopril, making it the fourth most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, according to HealthCentral. it was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1987, one of the kind of drubes called angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors. It’s a generic, and it’s also sold under the brand names Prinivil and Zestril.
My doctor prescribed lisinopril for me for a pesky blood pressure problem. She sent a prescription for 30 tabs at 20 mg to my local pharmacy here north of New York City. They wanted to charge an $18.85 co-pay with my Part D Medicare drug plan. So 90 days (three months) would be $56.55.
Because I’ve price-shopped in the past by comparing their prices with Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs, I checked their prices. They offered $8.60 for 90 tabs (that would be $2.87 for 30.) Plus $5 shipping, for a total of $13.60.
This squares with my previous reporting. In one case, the medication was going to be $68 a month from my local pharmacy, and $10 a month from Cost Plus.
Cost Plus has a method: “Every product we sell is priced exactly the same way: our cost plus 15%, plus the pharmacy fee, if any,” Cuban writes on his site.
We have also seen other cases in which putting away your insurance card and paying cash saves money.
Savings possibility of $3.3 billion
Medicare could have saved up to $3.3 billion in 2020 if it had bought some generic drugs at Cost Plus prices, according to a study published last year in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The researchers, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, “compared the price of 89 generic drugs sold by Cost Plus Drug in 2022 to the price paid by Medicare Part D plans in 2020,” CBS wrote about the study. “After adjusting for changes in drug costs between 2020 and 2022, the researchers found that Medicare paid more on 77 generic drugs: $8.1 billion compared with $4.5 billion if Medicare had purchased the drugs at the same prices as Cost Plus.”
In another study, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers said using cancer drugs at Mark Cuban Cost Plus prices also promised significant savings — an estimated potential savings of $661.8 million for the seven oncology drugs studied. “Replacing current Part D median formulary prices with MCCPDC pricing could yield significant savings for seven generic oncology drugs. Individual beneficiaries could save nearly $25,200 USD per year for abiraterone or between $17,500 USD and $20,500 USD for imatinib,” the study said.
Cuban said in June that his company is engaging with Medicare to discuss drug pricing.
